Mrs Cupid
by Frea O'Scanlin
Summary: This time, it's not Oliver's fault. Or, the story of how Felicity's quick thinking in Kazakhstan might stay with them...til death do them part.
1. Ridiculous Romantic Comedy

**A/N the First**: Hello! This was a Tumblr prompt that somehow became a whole thing. Updates will be sporadic. Thanks to the person that originally prompted me, to all of my pre-readers, and to everybody who clicked this story despite the name. You're awesome.

* * *

**Chapter One  
In Which Felicity and Oliver Become the Plot of a Ridiculous Romantic Comedy  
**

* * *

Oliver wasn't used to waking up in a hospital bed. Really, the only time he really did was when he had his tonsils removed when he was eight, and in China after they pulled him off of the island. Ever since then, he had Diggle and Felicity to patch up his bullet holes and gaping chest wounds in the makeshift infirmary in the Foundry. So when he woke on starched sheets, looking up at fluorescent light rather than the salmon ladder, confusion rolled in.

"It's okay," a voice to his left said. "You're in a hospital, but you're going to be okay. I mean, well, you weren't going to be okay, but I sneaked some of your herbs in and the doctors think you've made a miraculous recovery, but you're okay, you really are."

Felicity's face moved into view. She was pale and her eyes looked huge because her glasses were gone, but he immediately relaxed a little because she was there and she looked unharmed. He tried to say something, but his throat was dry, so he ended up gesturing a little helplessly.

"What? Oh! Here, they left some water. Do you need help sitting up? I…" Felicity's hand fluttered for a second before he saw the determination take over. When she helped him adjust the bed and sit up, she remained unsurprisingly gentle. Felicity was always full of surprises, but that was never one of them. She handed him a water cup and refilled it after he drained it.

"Where?" he finally managed to say.

"Kazakhstan, still. We're in—oh, I can't pronounce it. I tried, but the nurse laughed at me. Anyway, you're going to be fine, they just want to keep you one night more, and that's when I laughed at the nurse because—well, that right there." She nodded at the fact that he had already swung his legs out of bed. "Guess you're signing out AMA."

"Damn right I am," he said. His legs were shaky when he finally pushed himself to his feet, but he closed his eyes for a second and found his center. Then he took another step and tipped forward.

Felicity caught him, bracing him with her hands on his shoulders. It put their faces close together, but he noticed a much more pressing matter: he could feel every bump and ridge in her hands through the thin fabric of the hospital gown, and there was definitely a ring on a finger she usually left bare. To double-check, he looked down at her left hand. He was pretty sure he wasn't hallucinating the rather simple wedding ring on her ring finger.

Her wince didn't just speak volumes, it wrote a cliff-notes series as well.

"Felicity?" he said.

"I was looking for a way to break that to you gently when you woke up and then you did wake up and it totally slipped my mind, and um, I can explain, I really can."

"Is there a Kazakh out there I'm going to have to go put the fear of god into?" Oliver asked, and he was surprised by just how much he disliked that idea.

She grimaced. "I can do that myself, thanks, but no, not exactly. You…yeah, let's sit you down first."

"I'm fine—"

"By which you mean you're falling over." She gave him a solid push back onto the hospital bed. He could have fought her off, but he had learned not to argue with that expression. "Oliver, they weren't going to let me in here."

"What?"

"I'm not family. You gave me power of attorney, but they didn't recognize it, and you were dying, and I had to do something."

"What does this have to do with anything, Felicity? Who did you marry?"

Felicity pushed her hands through her hair and blew out a breath. "Look down."

He did, but all he really noticed was that the hospital gown was a great deal shorter than he liked. He shifted the hem a little and something gold glinted on his hand. Again, he had to ascertain that he wasn't hallucinating. He made sure his voice was measured and calm when he said, "Felicity, why am I wearing a wedding ring?"

"Because I told them I was your wife and then I went, and um, faked our marriage certificate?" The words came out in a rush. "Look, please don't be mad. It's not permanent, none of it's real. I just I had to think of something and I don't look anything like Thea, so pretending to be her wouldn't have worked. Are you mad? Is that your mad face? I can't tell."

"I'm—I'm not mad." But it was a lot to process, just like waking up in a hospital bed. The band on his finger felt oddly heavy for being a fake thing. "Where did you get the rings?"

"Hardware store down the street. If your finger turns green and falls off, try not to sue me."

"No promises." He rubbed the edge of his thumb over the ring. "It's not exactly great, but you did what you had to do and you saved my life. Thank you."

She rocked back on her heels like that was the last thing she expected to hear. "Oh. You're welcome."

For a moment, awkward silence reigned, and he stared at the ring on her finger while rubbing the one on his own.

Felicity cleared her throat. "Well, this is a great and fortuitous start to our fake marriage and all, but want help getting out of here now?"

"Please."

He stood on his own long enough to pull on the street clothes she picked up for him, but he needed her assistance down the hallway to the front desk. She caught him up on the rest of the team: Diggle had gotten Roy and Sara out of the country already, she had already arranged for a jet to get them back to Starling City, and she would annul their marriage on the plane by destroying the paper trail she had to create.

"I dunno," he said, wincing a little because it felt like his system had tried to turn itself inside out. Taking the herbs was never pleasant. "It's actually a bit of a convenience, isn't it?"

Felicity's glare was sudden and awe-inspiring. "Oliver," she said through her teeth, "I will sew you up. I will play at being your wife to save you in a hospital in a city I can't pronounce. I will be your EA and commit all manners of felonies in the name of justice for you. But if you think I'm going to marry somebody whose idea of a proposal is to say, 'oh, hey, it's convenient for us to be married,' you really, really don't know much about me."

"You're right. That was a bad joke." It didn't seem smart to tell her that he was freaking out a little bit, even though the marriage was fake. But he came back from the island knowing he was never going to have a normal life and all of the trappings, so it was _strange_ to have a ring on his finger and a woman claiming to be his wife. "I'm sorry. I do know you better than that."

She gave him a nod, but he can tell she was still a little upset. He wondered what happened to her glasses.

"Although, you know, you proposed to me," he said.

She snorted, and just like that, he knew they were good again.

It took half an hour of arguing with the doctors before they let him sign the paperwork, and he was almost seeing double when Felicity helped him out of the hospital and to the rental car. He kept his arm around her shoulders. Her hand was clammy around his wrist, but she kept her chin up.

He collapsed gratefully onto the passenger seat. "Are you okay to drive without your glasses?"

"I'll be fine. You should sleep. You're looking a little green, but not in a 'your finger is going to fall off' kind of way."

"I'll sleep on the plane."

"If you're sure."

"I am. Say, how far do fake wife duties go, exactly?"

"Oliver, I am _not_ going to consummate our fake marriage with—"

"I was hoping we could stop and you could buy me a coffee, since I can't seem to find my wallet," Oliver said, and he had the pleasure to see Felicity go that bright, stutter-y red that he shouldn't enjoy as much as he did. But he was kind of a sadist, and it was cute. Not that he was ever telling her that.

"R-right," she said. "Coffee. I can make that happen."

They didn't remove the wedding rings until they reached the plane, where he kept his promise and slept. He woke to find Felicity curled up on the chair next to his, her head resting on his shoulder and her fingers still on her keyboard, though the machine was in sleep mode. She slept like the dead, so he didn't feel bad when his phone rang. He fished it out of his pocket. "What's up, Dig?"

"Oliver, do you have access to the internet?"

"What? Why?"

"You might want to check TMZ."

Oliver's stomach sank. Ending up on TMZ was only something he wanted to do when he was being Oliver Queen, Billionaire Playboy and he hadn't been that in a while because the board didn't like it. So if he was a feature on TMZ, it could potentially have something to do with the other side of his double-life, which was never, never good. He reached over and took Felicity's laptop (she stirred and muttered something in her sleep) and accessing the account she set up for him. He turned to the TMZ homepage and wasn't just his stomach sinking.

"How on earth—we were in Kazakhstan," he said, staring in disbelief at the picture on the front page. "How did they get this?"

"Some enterprising kid with a camera phone. How do you think? Anything you want to fill me in on? Did you two manage to find a drive-in chapel on the way to the hospital or something?"

Oliver pinched the bridge of his nose. The picture in front of him was worth more than a thousand words. Felicity was helping him out of the hospital, her left hand wrapped around his left wrist so that their matching wedding bands were in plain sight. "They wouldn't let Felicity in to see me. She took matters into her own hands."

"And married you?"

"It's not real."

"Tell that to the press. They're having a field day. It's already on the local news. It's only a matter of time before Thea and your mother find out."

Honestly, he'd rather deal with Queen Consolidated having a total meltdown than to see Felicity's name dragged through the mud, as it inevitably would be if she were publicly connected to him. He knew about all of the rumors that circulate through the office, and it never passed his notice the way the corners of her mouth dipped whenever she heard about them. This was really the last thing he wanted. "Thoughts on how to get out of this?"

"Find an heiress, get caught cheating, big break-up? No, that won't work, as you and Felicity need to be on good terms. Sara and I'll brainstorm it out, we'll figure something out. How's she handling it? I haven't heard any hyperventilating."

"She," Oliver said, "is sleeping. And I'm going to keep letting her sleep."

"Such a good husband," Diggle said.

"Remind me to kick your ass for that comment later."

Diggle's snort sounded a hell of a lot like Felicity's as he hung up. It occurred to Oliver, not for the first time, that his partners were a couple of smartasses.

Next to him, Felicity shifted, slowly waking. He could tell she was aware the minute her hands snapped out, seeking the laptop he'd taken from her. She put the one that was now ring-less over her heart. "Oh, god, Oliver, you can't do that to me, I thought I dropped it again and—wait, why do you have a picture of us on that thing and…"

She trailed off, her face going ashen. "No, no, no," she said, and she snatched the laptop away, typing furiously. "This is not happening, this is—oh, god. Why? How?"

"Some kid with a camera phone. It's okay, Felicity."

"No, it's _not_ okay, I screwed up. Hopefully they haven't gotten too many pageviews and we can kill this, I can crash their servers, it will be fine." She muttered under her breath, fingers flying way too fast for him to follow. Windows appeared and disappeared at blinding speeds.

He risked his life and put his hands over hers on the keyboard. "It's already on the news back home. Diggle called. It's out."

"So Starling City thinks we're…"

"Married, yes."

Felicity's curse was definitely not what most societies would consider ladylike.

"Just curious, but how deep did your hacking go on this one?" Oliver said. "Like, if TMZ were to look into public record…"

"They would find a marriage certificate. I didn't Photoshop any pictures of us on a honeymoon or anything because that crossed the line into crazy stalker, but I needed to make sure, you know?" Felicity tipped her head back and closed her eyes, looking miserable. "We did not just become the plot of a ridiculous romantic comedy, we did not just become the plot of a ridiculous romantic comedy."

Uncertainly, Oliver reached out and put his arms around her. He wasn't the greatest with interaction, but she seemed like she could really use a hug. His own brain whirled. He'd landed himself in imbroglios quite a few times with the media, which was why the Queens kept a really good law firm on retainer. Usually those indiscretions could be bought off pretty easily (sometimes it was what they were going for all along), but he got the feeling that this isn't going to be one of those times. And Felicity was not and would never be an indiscretion.

Hell, as far as the world's concerned, he was married to her.

"I don't know, I put on a mask and shoot bad guys in the knee with arrows," Oliver said, since everything else sounded stupid.

"That still doesn't make you Cupid."

"Sure it does, Mrs. Cupid."

He felt her start shaking and instant panic set in. But when she pulled back, he could see she was crying because of the laughter quaking through her. "Mrs. Cupid?" she asked, wiping at the tears. "I never saw myself as much of a Psyche, really. But, Mrs. Cupid. Oh, gosh."

Oliver decides he wasn't going to ask who Psyche was. "Feeling better?"

"Freaking out less, at any rate. What are we going to do?"

"We're going to talk to my lawyers and let a publicist come up with a cover story that doesn't involve hacking or hospitals in Kazakhstan, and then we'll get an annulment."

"What's our excuse for the annulment?"

"Too many drinks in Vegas?"

Felicity sighed and leaned back against the chair. "Maybe something that doesn't involve Vegas. Vegas seems tacky to me. Maybe it's the gold lamé or something. Either way, so many people are going to accuse me of being a gold-digger."

"If either of us is digging for gold here, it's me." Oliver eyed Felicity's hair. "Though I have it from a reliable source that you dye it."

The joke was terrible but it at least made her smile as she rolled her eyes. "I'm going to go talk to Pilot Joe," she said, "and see how much time we have until we land. You should probably call your lawyer. I mean, you're the best fake husband, you really are, but I wasn't kidding when I said I needed a better proposal than that."

"Next time I'll do better," he said, and both of them froze. "I mean…"

"Yeah, I get what you mean," she said, and he had the absurd pleasure of seeing her flush pink before she vanished into the cockpit.

As for him, he mentally kicked himself a couple of times because how stupid was that, even? And then he sighed and picked up his phone. He needed to call his lawyer because he ended up fake-married to one of his best friends and now the world thought it was real, and it was only going to get worse, and his system was still recovering from the herbs. This is why, he thought, he never liked waking up in hospital beds.

* * *

**A/N the Second**: Everybody hold onto your butts. Also, I don't post a lot of my _Arrow _fic on ff-net but I have a buuuuunch. You can find it all listed on my blog and my Tumblr in my profile. You know. If you want to see more. Just saying.


	2. Monkey Wrench

**A/N the Second:** Hello! Thank you for the wonderful reviews and favorites and talking about this fic on Tumblr. You guys are all wonderful. Posting chapter 2 today so that it catches up with AO3. Not sure when chapter 3 will be out, but thankfully last night's episode answered a question that's very important for later events.

* * *

**Chapter Two  
In Which A Monkey Wrench is Lovingly Applied to the Best Laid Plans of Oliver and Felicity**

* * *

Diggle had the car waiting at the airstrip. Sometimes Oliver's money was a help more than hindrance; Felicity imagined that if they had to go through the gate at the airport, there would be paparazzi mobbing the place. She wondered if that was what it was like for Oliver after those fishermen found him. Had he come back to Starling City to find a thousand members of the press and other skeevy organizations waiting for him at the gate, their flashbulbs ticking? He never really talked about that, but then, he was Oliver. He didn't really talk about _anything_, and on the subject of the world thinking them married, he was being even more reticent than usual. But now Diggle was waiting for them, and Felicity was relieved.

Until Diggle greeted them with the biggest grin ever. "How was the honeymoon?"

Oliver breathed out through his nose.

Felicity took a step between them. "I wouldn't have picked Kazakhstan as the location of my honeymoon, and I'm kind of hoping that the real one doesn't involve getting poisoned. Though with my luck, it will. The one time I decide to be adventurous with food, I'll probably end up—ugh, it's not real and it's a nightmare."

"It's 'best wishes' if it's to the bride, right?" Diggle asked. "And 'congratulations' to the groom?"

"Maybe we should get out of here now?" Oliver asked.

Diggle smiled when he climbed behind the wheel. Of course he found all of it funny. And it _would_ have been funny if it weren't so wholly and completely mortifying.

"Both of your apartments have quite a few people watching, waiting for the first picture of the two of you as a married couple," Diggle said.

Felicity felt her stomach tilt. Soon she was going to need a paper bag. Whether it was for throwing up or hyperventilation would be determined later.

"You should know that if you ever need any advice from a real married person, I'm here for you. Deeply, genuinely here for you," Diggle said.

"You're having a little too much fun with this," Felicity said. "It could have just as easily been you on the faked marriage certificate. Though I don't think Lyla would like that very much at all, and she'd probably karate chop me in half."

"She would find it funny," Diggle said. "Also, as amazing as the two of us are, Felicity, I doubt we're TMZ material."

"I am going to crash their servers," Felicity said. "Not today, and not tomorrow because that would look suspicious, but someday soon. I shall have my revenge."

Oliver placed his hand on her wrist, surprising her. "That's heading down the bad guy route a little bit," he said, giving her a tiny smile.

That smile, which actually reached his eyes, did wonderful things to the vipers eating at her stomach lining. She was aware that Oliver Queen had very strong opinions on marriage (otherwise he would have woken up married to somebody random in Vegas years ago, knowing him) and she was even more aware that this was her fault. She hadn't killed the marriage certificate soon enough, and now TMZ had it and the world thought they were married. That knowledge sat like a stone on her chest, making it a little hard to breathe.

Plus, _next time I'll do better_? They weren't even married for real and she had apparently passed on her ability to blurt out the most embarrassing thing possible.

"TMZ deserves it," she told him, giving him a dark look.

"No arguments here. Diggle, maybe we'll go to the Foundry and come up with a game plan. Sara's there?"

"Patrolling," Diggle said cheerfully.

"Without support?"

"She told me to remind you—for the fiftieth time—that she can look after herself. Those are her words verbatim."

"You wouldn't like her so much if she were a push-over," Felicity said when he looked displeased, and it hit her: Sara. She didn't know what Sara and Oliver's relationship was and she suspected none of them really did, not even Sara and Oliver themselves. But she knew they weren't platonic, which she tried not to let bother her. "Um, so, how did she take the news?"

"She says 'Mazel Tov,'" Diggle said.

"That's it?"

"It's Sara," Diggle said, and Felicity couldn't deny that he had a point.

Sara was back from her patrols when they arrived at the Foundry. It was nearly one in the morning, but Felicity's time clock was completely off balance. Also, she didn't think she'd be sleeping for a few days, not until they figured all of this out.

The last thing she expected was for Sara to give her a hug when they walked in. "Doing okay?" the vigilante asked, directing the question at both of them.

Oliver gave her the same tight smile he'd been showing to all of them. "I've had my death faked for five years, why not a fake marriage to add to that?" he asked.

"You sound like Felicity," Sara said.

"Well, we _are_ married," Felicity said, and all of them froze, which gave her plenty of time to add, "sort of."

Sara started laughing first and Diggle, traitor that he was, joined in.

"C'mon," Sara said, slinging a friendly arm around Felicity's shoulders. "Ollie always had women throwing themselves at him, trying to trick him into marriage, and now the last woman that would do that is sort of married to him. It's a little funny."

"I'm tired, so we should come up with a plan," Oliver said. "Like how we're going to get Felicity back into her apartment without ending up on TMZ."

"She can crash with me," Sara said. "You go home like regular, Ollie. You're used to the cameras, you can take it."

"And I can't?" Felicity asked. A split second, it occurred to her that this wasn't a challenge against her as a person. Why would she even want to face the cameras? She didn't want to be in this mess in the first place. Introducing herself as Mrs. Queen in the hospital just gave her unpleasant flashbacks of facing down Moira Queen and coming away licking her wounds. "Actually, never mind that. We've got a meeting with Oliver's lawyers in the morning, to get this, um, sorted out. What we're actually going to tell the lawyers is beyond me because I don't think they'll react well to 'your client was dying so I faked being his wife to give him some all-healing herbs he picked up when he was stranded on an island for five years oh and also he's the Arrow.'"

"If we're throwing out suggestions, I would go with telling them none of that," Diggle said, crossing his massive arms over his chest. "But then what do I know? I'm not the one who got married in an Asian country yesterday."

She could actually hear Oliver breathing through his teeth. It was kind of fascinating.

"We'll keep it simple," Oliver said, looking at each of them in turn. "I ate something that didn't agree with me, the hospital wasn't letting Felicity in to see me, so she told a little white lie and used some rings she found at the hardware store."

"So sort of the truth?" Felicity asked, raising her eyebrows.

"And the marriage certificate?" Sara asked. She let Felicity go to cross over to the monitors and pull up the evidence in high definition.

Oliver shrugged and gave them the 'Playboy Oliver' smile. "They can deal with that. They have ways."

"And you really think that's going to work?" Diggle asked.

"The amount they bill per hour means it will work perfectly," Oliver said. "Anyway, any objections to this plan? Good. I'm going to sleep here. The meeting's at nine."

"C'mon, Felicity, we can take my bike," Sara said.

Which was how Felicity spent her first night "married" to Oliver sleeping on his sort-of girlfriend's couch.

* * *

Several hours later, she was beginning to wish the couch had swallowed her whole.

"If I may ask, where did Miss Smoak get the skill to falsify the document and place it in city records?"

Felicity gave Oliver her most helpless look. For a second, all she could experience was the terror of sitting across the table in the interrogation room from Detective—no, Officer—Lance, denying her hacking abilities. But Oliver touched the side of her wrist under the table, dispelling those thoughts.

"It doesn't matter," he said to his lawyer, who had introduced himself with a smile and a please-call-me-Dave (Felicity was not going to; he looked like an actual adult, so Mr. Hu it was). "The document isn't real. Felicity told a white lie because she was worried about me, and I don't see why she should have to pay for that."

"Well, she apparently displays enough familiarity with computer systems and our legal system to plant a very real-looking document into the city records. A document that," and Mr. Hu shifted his glasses to look at his tablet, "has been in there for a couple of weeks, by all appearances. But we'll disregard that for now. Why go as far as to plant the document?"

"Because—"

Oliver's touch changed to a grip. He squeezed her hand in warning; they'd agreed before the meeting that she wasn't supposed to talk. "It doesn't matter," he said. "You have my word it's not real. Can you make it disappear?"

"Make it disappear?" Mr. Hu asked. "This is on the front page of every major news website right now. If it weren't, I could make it go away easily. It wouldn't be a problem. But the fact of the matter is, you're in the spotlight right now."

Felicity wanted to moan and rest her forehead against the cold glass of the table. Oliver's lawyers had a super-nice office, entirely made of chrome and cream and glass. Of course, he probably paid them a fortune greater than the income of some third world countries, but still. She hadn't commented because she was trying to stick to their deal and not talk, but things were _not_ going well.

"I have no idea why the media is paying as much attention to us as it is," Oliver said.

"Yes," Felicity said, finally breaking. "Why are they even interested? It's not really that scandalous. It's not like it's a picture of Oliver doing blow off of a hooker's—"

Oliver's fingers spasmed on her wrist. "I thought I told you to stop doing image searches of me," he said under his breath.

Felicity wrinkled her nose. "How am I supposed to get rid of the pictures if I don't search for them in the first place?"

"I agree that it's not very scandalous, all things considered," Mr. Hu said, making them both look up. He clicked his pen a couple of times and tapped the tip against the glass. "But our researchers have noticed a trend that might surprise you. The two of you have garnered quite a lot of support."

Felicity and Oliver blinked in unison at the lawyer. "I beg your pardon?" Felicity asked.

Finally, Mr. Devlin straightened up, stretching a little bit. His eyes were deep-set and heavy-lidded and Felicity wondered if he just appeared to be sleepy or he hadn't actually slept. Either way, he cleared his throat. "Shareholder points for Queen Consolidated took a healthy bump when the news hit."

"Well, that's good and all, but—"

"Analytics place 'Queen' as well as your names and 'CEO and Cinderella' as common phrases in social media sites across the board, as well."

"CEO and what?" Felicity asked. She wasn't hearing this. This was not real.

"Trending topics on Twitter included your names—including a 'cutesy' portmanteau I won't share here—and the most popular retweets were of the picture from Kazakhstan," Mr. Devlin said, pushing a tablet across the table. Felicity caught it by instinct; the numbers flashing across it made her goggle in shock.

Next to her, Oliver let go of her wrist. He wasn't even brushing up against her and Felicity could feel him tensing, going stiff as a board. It didn't help her own stomach, which was threatening to upend all of its contents onto the tablet she held. Which might actually be preferable because she simply could not believe these numbers.

Last week was a bad time to turn off their Google Alerts.

"What are you saying?" Oliver said between his teeth.

"I'm saying, Mr. Queen, that quite without any prompting from our PR department, the public has painted the secret marriage of you and Miss Smoak into quite the fairytale romance." Mr. Devlin met Oliver's gaze head on, never blinking.

If there were ever any words that Felicity was positive would never describe anything in her life, they were "fairytale romance." Hell, romance itself had been kind of in increasingly short supply since she joined Team Arrow. Not that she was complaining. She wasn't complaining. It was just a fact of her life. She'd mostly made her peace with it.

But that didn't stop her from doing what she did best: she blurted out the first thing to that comes to mind. "They're saying I'm _Cinderella_? But I had both of my shoes on in that picture."

Mr. Hu and Mr. Devlin both blinked at her over that one, but interestingly, she saw the corner of Oliver's mouth twitch up.

Distress over the very real kettle of hot water she'd landed them in, however, took precedence over embarrassment. "So what do we do?" she asked. "There must be something."

"Well, if I'm going to be honest, the best thing we can do right now is not to call any attention to the falsified document, if you're so interested in protecting Miss Smoak, Mr. Queen."

"I am," Oliver said.

"So in this case we would simply file for an annulment. I assume that the marriage hasn't been consummated."

"No," Oliver said before Felicity could do anything more than sputter. "Given that it's not real, it has not been. If an annulment will protect Felicity from any legal recrimination, then I'm for that. She was doing everything in her power to make sure I was okay. She doesn't need to be punished for that."

"Understandable. And an annulment is acceptable to you as well, Miss Smoak."

"Absolutely."

"Okay, I'll start drawing up the paperwork—"

"Actually," Mr. Devlin said, and Felicity felt something deep inside freeze. "We might want to hold off on that."

Oliver turned toward him with a look Felicity had seen quite a few times. Usually it was hidden under the hood. "And why would we want to do that?"

"Because right now, Queen Consolidated's approval rating is almost to pre-earthquake levels. Your fairytale romance is exactly the kind of attention we need."

"Can anybody else hear the opening music to a horror movie right now, or is it just me?" Felicity asked because suddenly, she could see exactly where this was going to and the Felicity Train did not stop at that station.

The vein jumping in Oliver's neck told her she wasn't alone in figuring it out. "I will not," he said in a measured voice, "use Miss Smoak's reputation as a publicity stunt. I know what you're getting at and the answer is no."

"Doing this could provide us with the profits margin to finally buy out Isabel Rochev's shares of Queen Consolidated," Devlin said, and Felicity froze.

She knew what Isabel Rochev was capable of, more than anybody else. She was the one that did the research back when they were trying to save Queen Consolidated. She read the reports, the roll-outs, the employee testimonials, all of it about what Isabel Rochev did to the companies she bought. Hell, most of the reason she and Diggle had gone to fetch Oliver had been because Felicity could see the writing on the wall. It had taken her seeing him in person to realize how much she had been denying missing him at all.

"We have a plan to buy back her shares," Oliver said, turning his attention back to the men across the table. "My private life—and Miss Smoak's—shouldn't enter into that."

"How long?" Felicity asked.

All three men blinked at her.

"To buy Rochev out? How long? Oh, don't look at me like you're surprised. I've been his EA for months, I practically help him run his side of the company. I can talk business."

Oliver leaned toward her, looking pained. "If this is about Russia…"

"It's not." She looked at Mr. Devlin specifically. "How long?"

"Six months," he said, straightening his shoulders and giving her a look of renewed interest. "Provided the public stays enamored with you, and anticipating no major setbacks."

Felicity breathed in deeply. Six months. That seemed like an impossibly long time, especially with the amount of danger they faced almost every night. Also, she was well-aware of how insane this sounded and how insane she must be for even considering it.

But if it would save all of the Queen Consolidated employees…

"Felicity," Oliver said. "Can we talk? Alone?"

Mr. Hu and Mr. Devlin rose to their feet, buttoning their suit jackets as they did so. "We'll let you have the room," Mr. Hu said.

Mr. Devlin followed him out. "One thing," he said, pausing in the doorway. "An annulment now will set us back in our attempts to seize control from Miss Rochev. Keep that in mind."

Oliver breathed through his teeth again as the door closed. Felicity instantly felt a sharp stab of remorse because, after all, it had been her actions and her complacency that have gotten them into this mess. If only she'd taken care of the fake marriage certificate faster, then they could just claim a bad Photoshop job on the picture outside of the hospital and they would be going about their day like it was just another regular, ordinary day.

"Oliver, I'm sorry," she said.

He stayed quiet.

"This is such a nightmare. I keep pinching myself and hoping I'll wake up and nope, I'm awake already. And I'm sorry I was even considering it, even if it was just for a second. It's crazy. We'll find another way to get the company back from Isabel—"

"How long would it take?"

Felicity gripped the arms of her chair. This was not the question she expected from Oliver. "Maybe a year if nothing goes wrong? I don't know exactly. I've done the numbers, but it's going to take time."

"And now it will take longer?"

"Probably. Most likely, actually. I'm sorry, Oliver—"

She hears his teeth click together. "Please stop saying you're sorry."

"Okay. Sorry—I mean, sor—yeah, I'll stop talking now."

Oliver pushed himself to his feet and she watched him warily as he crossed to the window. Even without living in his pocket for a year, she'd have been able to read his body language. For a second, she wanted to tell him to use his words, dammit, because she was pretty close to freaking out and she didn't want to freak out alone. But instead, she waited and watched the silent war going on under that stillness.

Finally, he spoke. "I don't want to be married."

She couldn't stop the stab to her heart, even if it was completely irrational. "Technically, we're not. If that helps."

Oliver punched the wall, a short, vicious jab that made her jump. He stayed rooted in the spot, breathing shallowly through his nose. "I am an idiot," he said, and those were again the last words she expected to come out of his mouth. "I am an idiot for even thinking about this. But if it gets her out of Queen Consolidated faster, I can't help but maybe think, how can I not? As unfair as that is to you."

"I'm the one who got us into this, hello," Felicity said, and her heart was beating a little faster. Whether it was from being startled or how _heavy_ this moment felt, like it was a tangible thing, she didn't know. She wasn't sure she wanted to know.

Oliver looked at her. The expression in his eyes would surely have wrecked a stronger person than her. "That doesn't mean you should have to pay for this. It's six months of your life. Minimum."

"Don't take this the wrong way, but you already are my life. I never see my house, I spend my days with you and my nights with you and oh, god, I'm stopping there." Felicity clenched her left fist, squeezing her fingers one by one. It was a trick she'd learned to help her with the inappropriate innuendos and the babbling, and she got a feeling her hand was about to get a workout. "I want her gone, too. And I wouldn't be giving up as much as you think I am. Hell, you'd be giving up more."

Oliver stared out the window again. "This is crazy."

"And you know that's true when it's coming from the guy who spent five years on a remote island."

"I want a post-nup."

"A what? No, wait. Oliver, our marriage certificate's not even real."

"Nobody knows that. And you're so good they'll never know that. If we're going to be—to be married," and Oliver went a little pale, and she'd have been fascinated by that but she was feeling a little pale herself, "I want you protected from the fall-out."

"You don't have to be responsible for me. I'm a big girl."

Oliver crossed his arms over his chest and _stared_. Felicity knew she had a fifty-fifty chance of winning one of those stare-downs, but it wasn't the time. So she sighed. "No gifting me outlandish things in the post-nup. I mean it."

For a second, his grin popped up. "Define outlandish."

The full implications finally caught up to her: if they went through with this, the world would think she was Oliver Queen's wife. Hell, according to the statistics on the tablet in front of her, most of them already did think that. And it was not just being his Girl Wednesday (he refused to get that right) or the voice in his ear, pulling him back when he was out in the city fighting people with guns and knives and bombs, but they would be _married_ (sort of) and all that that implied. She was glad that she was already sitting down because her knees melted into gelatin. She had to grip the sides of the table to keep from hyperventilating. "Are we," she said, "really considering this?"

She could hear how shaky Oliver felt when he took a deep breath. "Yes. Besides, it's not really that much of a stretch."

Felicity turned to look at him.

Oliver shrugged. "You already call me your work wife."

The humor helped dispel some of the nerves. She gave him a cautious and wavering smile. "So…what now? Do I get down on one knee and propose? You've already got the ring."

"I think…we can settle this on a handshake. Felicity Smoak, will you do me the honor of being my fake wife to trick the world into giving us good PR so we can finally dump Isabel Rochev?"

"At least until a better idea comes along," Felicity said.

And then she shook her partner's hand and wondered if he was questioning what the hell they've gotten themselves into now, too.

* * *

"I'm sorry, you're going to do _what_?" was all Diggle said when they told him the news two hours later.


	3. Thea's BS Detector

**A/N the First: **I've retrofitted chapters 1 and 2 to be past tense since I didn't realize that this story was going to be more than a one-shot when I first started it. Thanks to everybody who's left a review or favorited it. And I appreciate the patience.

* * *

**Chapter Three**  
**In Which The Crap (Mostly) Does Not Hit the Fan, But Thea's BS Detector Goes Off Anyway**

* * *

By the time they finished at the law office, Oliver felt like a husk.

He'd felt exhausted before and he would again. It went hand in hand with being a vigilante, and frankly, he was still recovering from being poisoned in Kazakhstan, so the hollowness he felt was partially that he wasn't fully up to task yet. He spent five years of his life exhausted in some form or another, tired of the existential questions, weary of survival, fed up with the realities of his existence. And ever since he returned to Starling City, at least somebody had been one step ahead of him, be it Malcolm Merlyn, Count Vertigo, Deadshot, or even Isabel Rochev with her desire to take over his family's company.

But he'd never felt quite like this before, like he had a purpose and a target and he couldn't work up the nerve to string the bow and nock the arrow and bring his enemy to the ground. Because his enemy, in this case, wasn't a person or even an ideal. His enemy was a businesswoman and defeating her meant crossing one of the very few lines he set for himself, the very first time he came to understand the harsh truths about his parents' marriage.

He kept silent as Diggle drove him and Felicity to his apartment, though he presented a small, absent smile to the paparazzi that waited outside, even though they shouted and crowded Felicity and him on their way up his front walk. In the apartment, the tour was easy to give because the apartment was an open space, impersonal because he hired a firm to decorate it for him. His apartment was for sleeping and most nights he crashed in the Foundry anyway. It was a little strange that he'd never had Felicity over there, and now she was moving in.

"Oliver, this hurts." Indeed, Felicity grimaced as she stood in the middle of his living room with her heels dangling from the fingers of one hand. "Is this why you never had me over before now? Was it shame?"

"Weren't you the one telling me that people have started using their computers as a TV replacement?" Oliver asked as he uncapped a beer for Diggle. He decided to ignore that Diggle downed half the beer. It was a situation that would likely lead all of them to drink at some point or another—they'd gotten into messes before, but this was a fine one—so he couldn't exactly fault Diggle for getting a head-start.

"But I know for a fact that you don't do that," Felicity said. "Which is why you should have a TV. You're a vigilante in charge of protecting a city and TV is a great way to get news about major disasters. Also I checked your network, and it's so unsecure it burns. Like genuinely causes me pangs of emotion deep down in my soul."

"Here. Drown your sorrows." Oliver handed her a beer.

"Thank you."

Diggle pinched the bridge of his nose. "You two realize that being married, even in the eyes of the public, that's a lot more than moving into an apartment together, right? Tell me I'm not the only one seeing problems here."

Oliver and Felicity exchanged a look. "Yeah," Felicity said. "We got that, John."

"I'm not sure you do," Diggle said.

"Do you want Isabel breathing down our necks for even longer? Because if we get an annulment, that's what's going to happen," Felicity said. "We're adults. We can handle it."

Diggle muttered something under his breath. Oliver decided he'd pay his friend back for the "crazy-ass white people" comment on the mat.

"We worked it out with the lawyers," Felicity said. She took a sip and grimaced again, and Oliver realized that he had no idea if Felicity even liked beer. She liked to wander up to Verdant when it was quiet, but usually she drank with Sara, not him. She knew his drink orders perfectly, but he had no idea what hers were. "Oliver's place has better security, and we'll set up the guest bedroom for me. People already think I slept my way into my current job, so nobody's going to exactly be surprised at work."

"I'm sorry about that," Oliver said, and Felicity waved it off like it was old news.

"So really, it's not like much changes," Felicity said, and he could tell she was being determinedly cheerful. "We'll keep up the charade in public, I'll stay here and keep making mortgage payments on my house, and in six months when we seize the company back from Isabel, we'll come forward with the announcement that we're better as friends, I'll move back home, and we'll get a divorce. Probably a fake one to match our fake marriage certificate."

"See? She's got it figured out," Oliver said with humor he also doesn't feel. He held his beer bottle up. "To Felicity's and my fake marriage."

Diggle gave them both looks. "I am not toasting that. I am not endorsing this."

"Your loss." Felicity tapped her bottle against Oliver's. "I have personally always wanted to be fake married to my really hot—I mean, to my boss. Gah. Though now I might have to file for divorce early because you don't even own a TV, Oliver."

"In the interest of being a good roommate, I will let you pick out a TV," Oliver said. "And you can set up whatever network you want. Sky's the limit, okay?"

"Okay?" Her face lit up. "More than okay! That makes me so happy I could kiss you."

They all heard the footsteps at the same time. "Well," Thea said as she ambled in, looking annoyed, "don't stop on my account."

"Hi." Oliver set down his beer, hard, mostly to cover the fact that Felicity jumped two feet in the air and that Diggle automatically reached for a side-arm. "How did you get in?"

"If you wanted to keep me out, shouldn't have given me a key. Though I guess I should knock now that you've got a wife and all. Who knows what I'll walk in on?" Thea's eyes cut to Felicity and Oliver could practically hear his partner gulp. "Congratulations, by the way. Or is it mazel tov?"

"Thea," Oliver said because he recognized that sort of angry, wild desperation on his sister's face. He'd seen it too many times since he returned from Lian Yu, whenever he didn't measure up to the standards Thea had built in her head over time.

"No, really," she said before he could try to make an apology. She looked between him and Felicity. "Don't let me interrupt. I wouldn't want to be the annoying baby sister that gets in the way of your wedded bliss."

For a moment, awkwardness settled in. Oliver tried to think of a lie he could tell Thea about his fake marriage, something that won't involve admitting he'd nearly died—that would only lead to more questions—but his mind went absolutely blank.

Felicity, on the other hand, let out a choked laugh. "You heard the lady," she said, and to Oliver's surprise, she rose up on her toes and kissed him, quickly. It was a brief, warm of her lips to his, but Oliver went still.

"Huh," Thea said, her brows drawing together. "That looked…incredibly awkward."

Diggle made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a muffled laugh.

"I'm not that great with public displays of affection. Sorry. Yeah," Felicity said. Oliver had one glimpse at how bright pink she was before she turned away, her hand over the lower part of her face.

"Uh-huh," Thea said.

"Not to be rude, Speedy," Oliver said between his teeth, "what are you doing here?"

Thea sauntered over to the refrigerator and helped herself to a Diet Coke. "I'm congratulating my big bro on his nuptials. It's not every day your brother gets married—or you find out about it via Twitter."

Oliver flinched.

"I mean, at the very least, it should've been Snapchat." Thea's baleful gaze swept over them as she opened the soda. "Assuming any of you were actually sober enough to operate Snapchat. I'm guessing copious amounts of alcohol were involved."

"We weren't drunk," Oliver said since Felicity still looked ready to vanish through the nearest exit and Diggle's shrug was the epitome of _you got yourself into this_. "But it did happen quickly. And we were going to tell everybody, but…"

"The internet kind of beat us to the punch," Felicity said. She took another panicky breath and Oliver recognized that one of her verbal geysers was on its way. He didn't stop her in time, for she barreled onward: "Look, it's my fault. Oliver wanted everybody there, he did, but I didn't want to cause a stir at work and if you tell one person, you have to tell fifty and then it would have spiraled and I don't know if I could have that much attention on me. We got two strangers to be our witnesses, it was all very hush-hush—and romantic! Right, of course, it was romantic. Very romantic and hush-hush, yes and I'm gonna stop talking, if that's okay."

Thea eyed all three of them suspiciously, one at a time. Her gaze settled on Diggle. "Did you know?"

He held his hands up. "These two idiots didn't even invite me, either. I would have made a great speech, and now the world will never hear it."

"Oh, you'll get your chance," Thea said. "You think I'm going to let the two of you run off and elope without a party?"

"Oh god," Felicity said.

"We have to welcome Felicity into the family in style," Thea said, and the smile she gave Oliver was malicious. She toasted both of them with her drink. "I'll host it at Verdant. All you have to do is show up and be so obviously in love like you are now. It'll be _the_ party of the year. It's the least I can do for my brand new sister-in-law."

"I don't think that's a good idea," Oliver said, taking a step forward.

She ignored him and focused on Felicity instead. "Can I see the ring?"

"Uh, I don't have it. On me. That is. I mean, it's gorgeous, Oliver picked out the perfect one for me and everything, but I don't…"

"It's in the shop, getting cleaned," Oliver said since Felicity resembled a cat treed by the lioness that is his younger sister. A ring. He had to buy a ring. He stepped between Felicity and Thea. "We don't need a party, Thea. We wanted to keep this under wraps, for the most part."

"Should've thought of that before you started trending, brother mine." Thea's betrayed look made his stomach hurt. "Well, as fun as this isn't, I'm gonna scoot. Ollie, you've got something on your…" She tapped the side of her lips, gave them all a jaunty wave, and sailed out of the room.

The minute the door closed behind her, Diggle shook his head. "I take it all back. This is going to be so much fun."

Felicity moaned and rested her forehead against the hand holding her beer. "She knows something's up."

"Probably, but it's our first day on the job. And at least it's only going to be a party," Oliver said. "Depending on her mood, she has the power to recreate an entire wedding for us. Maybe we should count our blessings."

"Your mother's going to be there, isn't she?"

"Probably. Knowing my sister, most of Starling City will be, too." He wanted something stronger than beer, but Oliver pulled out fixings for sandwiches instead. He could use something with more protein, as he can still feel the effects of the poison the League assassin used on him in Asia. "Just another thing to deal with. We'll get through it."

Felicity raised her head, looking aggrieved. "Well, great. Perfect. Oh, crap, she's right, I got lipstick on your face."

To his surprise, she steps around the refrigerator door and smudged her thumb over the corner of his mouth. An intense flash of memory, of her wiping off blood and making a joke about his shaving habits to Isabel, made him stop. This time there wasn't any nervous laughter. She just wiped at the lipstick, her brow furrowed in concentration. "If that's going to be a thing for us, I should really switch to a brand that rubs off less," she said.

"Yes, take one for the team," Diggle said, taking a sip of his beer.

"That's just what we need: the Arrow running around with pink lipstick all over his face," Felicity said, and Oliver was surprised at how much he suddenly wanted to shift his feet and back away from her, but she was still trying to rub the color off. "He'll really strike fear into the hearts of the bad guys then. I think I got it. Or most of it. Sorry."

"Thanks," Oliver said, and he cleared his throat. "I can try and talk Thea out of the party if it really bothers you."

"Good luck with that," Diggle said.

Felicity sighed. "She's doing us a favor, really, when you look at it. We can insist that she donate the proceeds of our party—or, I guess it would be our reception—to a charity or something. Keep playing up that fairy tale image the publicity department loves so much."

"Devious and philanthropic. I like it. What do you think, Oliver?"

His thoughts were that he didn't really care about a party. It was just another in a long line of them, of showing up as the CEO of Queen Consolidated in a tuxedo and smiling for people he didn't care about. In truth, he was more concerned by just how addled standing that close to Felicity, with her fingers against his lips, had left him. He picked up a knife and spread mayonnaise on a piece of bread with a sigh. "I think we need to buy some rings, if only to save Felicity from having to come up with more excuses."

"_Thank_ you," Felicity said.

* * *

Given his preference, Oliver would have gone to the Foundry that afternoon to get in some time working out, but with the press intensely focused on them, it was safer to just stay in for a little while. Diggle cried off after finishing his sandwich, commenting that he had his own marital issues—or ex-marital issues—to work on. Oliver hung around while Felicity moved around the apartment, familiarizing herself with the layout of his kitchen before she switched to setting up a network (and getting down on her hands and knees to do some of the wiring herself). Before long, the remnants of the League poison made themselves known, so Oliver laid on his couch and took a nap while Felicity worked.

He had no idea his couch was so comfortable.

When he stumbled into the bathroom, groggy from his nap, he finally noticed the tiny pink smudge at the corner of his lips. Calmly, he washed it off.

"Settled in?" he asked Felicity, who sat at the kitchen island with two laptops and a tablet. It looked like a portable version of her Foundry setup.

"As much as I can be without most of my stuff. I ordered a dehumidifier for the guest bedroom since it's probably just easier to keep one here rather than tote one back and forth. That's okay, right?" She gave him a hesitant smile when he nodded. "Have a nice nap?"

"Anything you want. I wasn't kidding when I said sky's the limit." He walked to the refrigerator and poured himself an orange juice, gulping most of it down. "Any catastrophes I should know about?"

"If you don't count the bad Photoshop jobs of us I found on Twitter, no. Officer Lance called, but he called Oliver's and not the Arrow's, so I let it go to voicemail."

"I appreciate that."

"For the record, we're avoiding him until we talk to Sara, right?"

Oliver grimaced.

"Taking that as a yes," Felicity said. "But that's good because she's on her way over. You missed a really fun Skype call where she made fun of everything in my closet as she packed a bag for me. But I own about fifty percent less fishnets than her, so who's the real winner here, hmm?"

Oliver grinned because he really couldn't help himself. "I've learned better than to comment."

"Good call. I did rock a good pair of fishnets for a _Rocky Horror Picture Show_ thing once, but those days are long in my past. Oh, hey, Sara. We're just talking about you."

Eyebrows high, Sara let herself into the apartment with a cardboard box tucked under one arm and wheeled luggage trundling after her. Her eyes cut down to Felicity's legs and back. "Fishnets?" she asked while Oliver rolled his eyes at her.

"I deleted all evidence," Felicity said.

Sara set the box down on the counter. "Darn. Could've put that in your wedding album. Maybe we can get a repeat performance at the bachelorette party."

Felicity made a face. "Does there really need to be a bachelorette party if the marriage isn't real?"

"The only thing that needs to be real is the alcohol. Brought all the stuff you wanted."

"Angel. Goddess. My favorite." Felicity stood to grab the box and the bag, though Sara waved her off of the latter. "Let's go dump this in my new habitat. Be right back, Oliver."

Because Sara shot him a significant look as she trailed Felicity out, Oliver finished his orange juice and stayed put. It wasn't hard to admit that maybe he was grateful that Sara had given him a way out of not discussing his current marital predicament the night before. If they were going to go through with this charade, the piper had to be paid, which included dealing with all of the lingering strangeness their relationship had been dealing with these past few weeks.

Having the world believe you're secretly in a fairy tale marriage, Oliver was discovering quickly, was really good incentive to have that Come to Jesus talk your relationship had been missing.

Indeed, when Sara came back, Felicity wasn't with her. "Wanna go a couple rounds? Your wife said I'm allowed to break you as long as we're both cleaned up by dinner time."

"She's not my wife."

"I know. But I get at least one dig."

"One. You get one."

His apartment had a home gym in it, a room that he told the interior decorator to leave alone. There hadn't been enough space for a salmon ladder, but he kept sparring weapons around and a full set of weights. Out of courtesy, he let Sara pick the weapons, and he was completely unsurprised when she tossed him a bo staff.

"Just out of curiosity," he said, spinning it. "How mad are you?"

"Not mad at all." She snapped the staff into the air and caught it, and he remembered that once upon a time, she had been on the color guard at their high school. It was such an incongruous mental image, now that he's seen the way her eyes could darken or the set of her jaw as she fought off a man twice her size. "I still think it's funny."

"Oh, great, that's—" He barely got the staff up in time when she attacked. The next sixty seconds were an exhilarating whirl of feinting and dodging. Her face stayed absolutely calm as she drove him backward, but he could read the tension she thought he couldn't see in the way she brought the staff down a little too hard, the beats of viciousness in which she drove at the holes in his fighting.

When he finally fought her off, he gave her a look. "Liar."

"Not mad, I swear."

"Then why are you trying to take my head off?"

Sara jabbed at his ankle. "Maybe I think your form's sloppy."

"My form is perfect."

"Your form is—you know, you're lucky you're such a good fighter _in spite_ of your form."

"Hey," Oliver said, puffing out an amused breath. He attacked, starting a new round, and this time he could tell Sara was going easy on him, but he didn't mind. For a good ten minutes, they did nothing but move in the kind of dance a good fight required. She whacked his calf, he landed a glancing blow off of her upper arm, but as much as they sought weak points, he could tell that they were neither giving it all their all.

Finally, he spotted an opening. He went for it, hoping to tap her across the abdomen. The split-second of a smirk was the only warning that the opening wasn't as perfect as he'd suspected. She flipped clean over his bo staff, snatched it with her free hand, and yanked it backward. He overbalanced and had to catch himself to keep from crashing to the floorboards, and when he looked up, her weapon sat snugly against his Adam's apple.

"Maybe I'm a little mad," she said, sighing. "But not at you."

Oliver looked at the bo staff at his throat and raised his eyebrow. "I'm confused."

She extended a hand to help him up, and he took it, popping up to his feet. By silent and mutual agreement, they moved to the wall to hang the staffs up. "I saw the news. You know, when your story broke. That millionaire Oliver Queen picks himself up a wife on a business trip. It was all over Channel Seven."

"Sara, I'm sorry. We had no idea."

"I figure if you had any idea it was coming, Ollie, we probably wouldn't be talking about this. You'd have stopped it. You don't have anything to apologize for." Sara crouched to pick up a couple of waters from the little mini-fridge. She took her time and she wasn't looking at him, and Oliver felt his stomach pitch. "But I think I do."

"I'm not sure I'm following."

She pushed herself to her feet (she was favoring one of her ankles a little, he noticed) and held out the bottle of water. "What does it say about me," she said, "that when I heard the news that my boyfriend upped and married somebody else, the first thing I felt was relief?"

Oliver's hands on the water bottle twitched. "I don't know," he said, keeping his voice neutral.

"It was only for a second, but…" Sara tilted her head back, her eyes closing. There was a wealth of pain etched into her expression. "I think, for just the moment, I had this profound sense that 'thank god, thank god, I'm not going to have a chance to be the train wreck that brings us down in flames.'"

"I could be the train wreck, you know," Oliver said. "I have experience."

"Even if you do, I have to wonder if you knew what you were getting yourself into. I'm not a bad bet, Ollie, but I'm pretty damn close."

Oliver took a deep breath, and another. "Sara, are you using the fake marriage the media created to break up with me?"

"I don't know." Sara finally met his gaze, and for a moment, Oliver really wasn't sure how he felt anymore. It was just one more hit on top of all of the others he'd felt since waking up in that hospital bed. "Maybe. I think I am. Maybe it's a sign. It complicates your life less if I'm not in the picture if you're going to be tap-dancing for the media to get your company back."

"You get that the marriage is fake, right? Felicity's already said she doesn't want to get in the way of what we have." She'd been very explicit about it, actually, in the ride from the lawyers' office to his apartment, about how he didn't owe her anything—which was a lie, she was Felicity, she'd saved his life too many times to count—and she wasn't going to judge him. And while the idea of even being partially married to Felicity and still seeing Sara on the side kind of sat like a lump in his stomach, he loved Sara. She'd been a missing piece settling back into place the first time he'd seen her alive again on that rooftop.

He didn't want this.

"It's not about Felicity at all." Sara shook her head, and her eyes spoke pure tragedy. "It's…I'm just giving you a head's up. I think you've felt this coming, too."

"I haven't," Oliver said, but she gave him that one particular look only she could make, the one where she saw right through him, and part of him wondered if she had a point. "Sara, I want us to work."

"Do you? My head is not a pretty place, Oliver. Do you really want some broken ex-assassin bartender who still dreams about her ex-girlfriend all the time? Is that what you want?"

"I want you," Oliver said, which he felt should be enough. He also wanted not to be married, he wanted Thea not to be pissed at him for breaking her trust yet again, and he wanted to be in the Foundry shooting tennis balls into the wall. But it did not appear to be a day where he got what he wanted.

"I really am sorry, Ollie. I think…I think this was coming, but the craziness sped up the timetable, if that makes you feel any better."

"Not especially," Oliver said.

"Yeah. I thought that might be the case." Sara bit her lower lip. "I'll clear off, go see my mom in Central City. It'll give us both some time to think. I think that might be the best solution for all of us, just until this media frenzy dies down."

"You don't have to do that. Felicity would appreciate having you around."

"But you wouldn't. I'm friends with you both."

"I'll take any piece of you I can get."

For a second, he saw tears well up in Sara's eyes, but none fell. Instead, she dug her teeth into her bottom lip harder and surprised him by hugging him around the middle. "I'm so sorry, Ollie. So, so sorry."

She left after that, but not before she apologized again, and he was too hollow to do anything more than nod tiredly. Frankly, by this point in his day, even with the nap, all he wanted to do was lay down and sleep for an eternity. Maybe if he could do that, this would all be over. The problems with Isabel and the media would vanish, returning him, if not to normalcy, at least to a setting he preferred. He took his aggression out on the training dummies and resistance training, pushing himself until he practically saw double. It didn't solve anything, but it made him feel at least a little better.

When he finally washed in the gym shower and headed into the kitchen, Felicity was nowhere in sight. Instead, there was a Tupperware container on the shelf of the fridge: "Felicity Smoak's famous enchiladas: just microwave for 90 seconds and _et voila_. If you need to talk, door's open. Just please knock first in case I'm dancing along to Madonna or something. – F"

He didn't wait for the enchiladas to cool, as the smell hit him before he even opened the microwave. Hunger made him practically demolish the entire dish. It struck him as he stood alone in the dark, feasting on enchiladas, that no matter how awful the day has been, at least he'd sort of married somebody that could really cook.


	4. Enemy and Breakfast

**A/N the First**: Thanks to everybody that's reviewed and left me messages, here or on Tumblr or Twitter. You guys are all wonderful. A special thanks goes out to my friend Vern for answering allllll of my questions about rings, and to everybody that offered suggestions about what Felicity might like. I appreciate, as ever, the patience.

* * *

**Chapter Four  
In Which the Enemy is Faced and Important Questions about Breakfast are Answered**

* * *

Felicity had never quite felt like she had belonged, even in her early years. She'd hated that plastic family they tried to sell in commercials because it was hard to look at their artificial smiles and find a reflection of her relationship with mother. So the feeling of displacement had always been present, but she was learning very quickly that there was a vast ocean of difference between "My mom and I aren't like Tina's family down the street" and "I regularly commit felonies for a guy that's a vigilante by night and a CEO by day and now the world thinks our not-exactly-real marriage is the greatest thing since sliced bread." And even if she'd mostly made her peace with her extracurricular work in the name of vigilante justice, this was a new level of weirdness, even for her.

Like the world thinking she was some kind of Cinderella.

Like kissing Oliver.

Like waking up in his guest bedroom.

Given everything that had happened, she didn't think it was overindulgent to stick her head back under her pillow and stay there with her eyes squeezed shut until she had a little better grip on reality.

She found Oliver in the open dining room, after she had brushed her hair and her teeth and put on a base layer of makeup. One of the realities she was working to accept was that he would regularly see her with sushi pajamas and bed-head. But the longer she could put that off, the better. At least some things never changed, though: when she wandered in, Oliver was at the island, wearing sweatpants, sans shirt, and calmly peeling a grapefruit.

"Hey, roomie," she said. Yes, she'd kissed him, but it was under duress and what was a little kiss between friends? She could keep it together.

He looked up to give her a smile, so apparently it was only weird for one of them. "Roomie?"

"It's the least awkward of all of your potential nicknames, and I never really got on the Ollie train."

"Please never do."

"Deal."

"Grapefruit?" He held up half of it in invitation.

"Oh, no, thank you. Though thank you for answering the question of who actually eats grapefruit for breakfast because I thought that was always a myth the media told us."

"Glad to be of service. Sleep well?"

"I may write a ballad to your sheets," she said as she hunted up a coffee. While she really preferred tea in the morning, shopping was something they could worry about later. "I hope that won't be too uncomfortable for you, especially when I accompany myself on the air guitar because _wow._ Clouds wish they were that comfortable."

Oliver raised his mug in a toast. "I'm glad you approve. Um, do you have the schedule handy?"

Felicity reached over to open the app she'd written to keep track of their schedules for various masks they wear throughout the day. She was looking forward to installing some smart screens in the kitchen. "AJ's got a soccer game this afternoon, so Digg will need to be there for that. You've got a meeting with Isabel at ten and you probably shouldn't miss it as you've canceled the last two."

"Mm."

"Nothing on the Arrow's schedule, so we'll ease back into things with a light night of listening to the police scanner and putting the fear of hoods into people trying to knock over liquor stores."

"Do we have time to hit a jewelry store before the meeting with Isabel?"

Felicity frowned as she paged through memos. "This afternoon, we do, but I was thinking about heading over to the precinct to talk to Officer Lance and start smoothing over ruffled feathers so we don't have a Thea two point oh problem. Want to tag along for that?"

Oliver stuck his tongue out and pointed at the back of his throat, gagging.

"Yeah, I don't blame you for that. That guy, not your biggest fan."

Which, she learned, was a massive understatement. Officer Lance and Oliver might have buried the hatchet as far as the past was concerned, but Oliver eloping with his assistant while in a relationship with Sara was a little too much for Quentin Lance. By the time Felicity walked into Queen Consolidated after her coffee with Lance, her ears were ringing and she felt like her skin might actively start to peel and expose the liar underneath.

The security guard, who usually just gave her an absent smile and a nod, jumped out of his desk chair the moment he spotted her in the lobby. He held open the security gate for her with a nod and a "Mrs. Queen."

"Um, no, I'm keeping my name, Harry, but thank you. I appreciate the assist."

Past the security gate, she had to stop and take a long, deep breath, and then another when that did absolutely nothing. _Just get through this, Felicity. You handled it when everybody thought you'd slept your way into the EA job, you can handle this now._ She repeated the words like a mantra in her head as she took the elevator up to her office.

Diggle waited by the elevator with a steaming cup of coffee. "Have I told you lately that I love you?" Felicity asked.

"Better not let the media hear you flirting with somebody who isn't your husband."

Felicity grumbled under breath. "How are things around here? Is it bad?"

"I think people are withholding judgment."

And the moment they were withholding that judgment over, Felicity realized, was here. She'd dressed carefully because she knew eyes would be on her, but one look at the assistants down the hall in Applied Sciences made her feel like she'd worn footie pajamas. She actually felt her confidence trying to melt away through the soles of her Mary Jane heels.

Diggle bumped her shoulder. "Remember, you're not actually married to the guy. They don't know what they're talking about."

Felicity sighed. "But they do these amazing potlucks and I'm going to miss those."

"I can do an amazing potluck," Diggle said.

She raised an eyebrow at him.

"Well, no, but I can order an amazing lunch from the Big Belly. Isn't that better?"

"I'll only mourn the Swedish meatballs for a little while, I promise." A glance into Oliver's office showed that he was deep in conversation with Isabel, so Felicity moved to her desk. Diggle brought a chair over instead of perching on the edge of her desk. She tilted her head and gave him a considering look. "John Diggle, are you trying to be my bodyguard right now?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

Felicity pursed her lips as she keyed in the code to check her messages. "Sure you don't. Though I am surprised you didn't tag along to see Officer Lance with me this morning."

"That's because Sara was tailing you, not me." Diggle took a sip of coffee, the corners of his lips curling upward at her indignant noise. "You think we're going to let you wander alone right now with the paparazzi bugging you?"

"I was going to a police station. Theoretically, it's one of the safest places in the city." Felicity paused. "Well, any city but ours. If you also don't regularly break the law on behalf of vigilante justice. Which is why I said theoretically."

"And how is Officer Lance taking the news?"

Felicity grimaced. "I don't think we should expect a wedding gift from him."

"Shame. He probably had some really soft hand towels picked out for the two of you."

For a second, they shared a skeptical look—and Felicity broke it by laughing so hard she had to clutch the arms of her chair to keep upright. Diggle chuckled until they both turned and saw Isabel Rochev standing in the doorway, one hand on her hip and an unimpressed expression firmly in place.

Felicity was out of her chair like a shot. "Isa—Miss Rochev. Hi."

"Miss Smoak. Or is that Mrs. Queen now? I see you finally made it into work."

"I authorized Felicity's time off." Oliver came up behind her, his jaw tight. "Nothing pressing this morning."

"I'm sure," Isabel said.

"It's, um, it's still Smoak," Felicity said. "I'm not taking his name."

"How very twenty-first century woman of you." Isabel's smirk bit through her last nerve, but Felicity gritted her teeth and bore down on the annoyance. "Congratulations appear to be in order. You can't imagine the frenzy you've caused around this place. They're all waiting to see what kind of ring Oliver Queen would give his secretary."

"Executive assistant," Oliver said. "And now wife. Unfortunately, it's in the shop, getting cleaned."

"Yes, we don't want it dirty for its big moment," Felicity said and she could feel words bubbling up at the back of her throat, but as ever, she remained powerless to stop them. "Want it to shine for the spotlight and all because there is one. A ring, I mean. There's totally a ring. It's very real and pretty—Oliver has great taste. In fact, we're picking it out—I mean up, I totally meant up—today!"

Isabel tilted her head, eyes narrowing. For a second, Felicity entertained the notion that Isabel was an oncoming car and she was the frightened animal caught in its headlights, but the business executive blinked and the predatory expression vanished. "I look forward to seeing it," Isabel said. "Perhaps tomorrow? We'll have lunch to celebrate your marriage. On me, of course."

And before Felicity could come up with a proper excuse to get out of what really was her own personal version of hell, Isabel simpered and walked away, hips swaying.

Oliver let out a long breath and gave Felicity an expectant look.

"I know, I know. That…was poorly handled." Felicity scowled and wanted to kick something. "Great, now I have to put a rush-order on a ring. Well, rings. You need a wedding ring, too."

"And you should probably have an engagement ring," Diggle said.

She twisted to look at him. "But there wasn't an engagement."

"You married a rich guy. You'll need some bling."

Felicity wrinkled her nose. "As long as it's not too big. I still need that finger for the S key." She dropped back into her chair with a sigh. "Sorry. I messed this up. Again. I'll look around and see if there any jewelers willing to ship special if we throw scads of—oh, wait. I can fix this."

Oliver's eyebrows went up. "You can?"

"I have this friend, she—wait, what's that look for? I have lots of friends. You two need to realize that I have a life outside of you." Felicity sat at the desk and began to type, calling up her contacts program, which would autodial for her. "Anyway, she works at Venit Jewelers downtown and she designs her own stuff on the side. I think she can hook us up."

"Discreetly?"

"You have to ask?"

Felicity reached for her phone, but Oliver put a hand over it to stop her. "About the rings," he said, and cleared his throat. "Probably something tasteful?"

"Really? Because I was going to go for a gaudy eighteen-karat myself." She had to smile when he gave her an exasperated look. "It's okay. Raquel's great. You let me take care of this, you scoot off and do CEO things."

"Scoot?" Diggle asked.

"Yes, scoot. That applies to everybody in this room that is male. Scoot along, gentlemen." She made a little shooing motion with her fingers. Diggle and Oliver exchanged one of their usual looks over her head, but they made themselves scarce. She took a deep breath and stared at the phone. She'd fallen out of touch with Raquel; calling out of the blue with a favor seemed rather mercenary, but given the extraordinary circumstances, it wasn't like she had much of a choice. So she took a deep breath and picked up the receiver. "Raquel? Hi, it's Felicity. How's it going? Seen the news lately?"

Four hours later, she watched her friend flip the sign on the front door of Venit Jewelers to CLOSED. "You are really saving our butts here, Raquel," she said. "Thank you, thank you, thank you."

"Not too often I get customers with the good kind of intrigue." Raquel Valenzuela had always reminded Felicity a bit of a stick bug, even though Felicity knew from experience the woman had an impressive wellspring of muscular strength. She had the boniest wrists in existence and her sweater hung off a frame that Felicity had once called Yzma-like (Raquel had laughed and had dressed as Yzma that Halloween), but her makeup, clothing, and jewelry were, as ever, spot-on. She aimed a smile at Felicity and Oliver as she came back behind the counter. "Usually it's men slipping in to buy their mistresses a bit of the shiny."

"I have couriers that do that," Oliver said, and Felicity belatedly realized that she should probably elbow him for that. When she did, he laughed. "Not that I would ever do that to my…Felicity…"

Raquel gave Felicity a questioning look: _this_ is the guy you married?

"Just keep in mind that I'm the one in charge of erasing your search history," Felicity told Oliver.

"Guess we should find a really good ring, then."

"I can help with that." Raquel reached into one of the showcases and pulled out a velvet-covered tray. "When I got your call, I went around and picked the rings that I thought would be most 'you.' It was actually pretty fun. I don't work the floor much. They've usually got me in the back."

"I'm glad we could help you out, and—ooh." Felicity picked up the ring closest to her, an Art Deco halo design and spent a moment just admiring the shine.

"And it begins," Raquel said, smiling.

Felicity poked around the tray, cooing at the rings she liked. She could feel Oliver's eyes on her, possibly assessing her, but she didn't care. He'd seen her get excited over the computer systems before. It wasn't a stretch that she could feel the same way about jewelry. "This is so pretty, Raquel. Are these your work?"

"Some of them."

"They're awesome." Felicity turned to Oliver. "Raquel and I met at MIT, she's brilliant."

"I'm not the brilliant one here," Raquel said.

"Yes, you are, you were the one that dragged me out to go shopping for 'real clothes' so I wouldn't live my life in hoodies and yoga pants."

"Yoga pants have their time and place, Felicity Smoak, and that time and place are not 'all the time' and 'everywhere.'"

"But they're super-comfortable, and my ass always looks…" Felicity trailed off and flushed when she remembered that Oliver was standing at her side like a silent shadow.

"Aw, it's cute that you still blush in front of your husband," Raquel said, laughing.

Was she forever going to jolt at the word husband? Felicity covered up a scowl by focusing on the rings. "Whatever, my ass looks great in yoga pants."

Raquel squinted at Oliver. "No comment from you?"

Oliver held his hands up. "I'm just here to pay for everything."

"Well, as long as you realize it early, I guess. How is it you two met, again?"

"She fixed my laptop." Oliver's smile actually seemed a little softer than usual, Felicity noticed, but she didn't look directly at him. He shrugged. "I'd be lost without her."

"That's the truth." Felicity tried on a ring with a diamond solitaire and snorted under her breath. It was the ring that society would expect from a wife of Oliver Queen, but it looked a little boring. And it was _her_ finger the ring was sitting on for the next six months. She pulled the ring off and set it back on the tray. "Is there anything with, hmm, an emerald?"

Oliver coughed.

Raquel shook her head. "You don't want an emerald. Too soft. Maybe a sapphire or topaz. Personally, I'm thinking topaz with the colors you like."

"You think?"

"I've got a really excellent one I designed, actually. I made it for somebody else, but the relationship fell through—dude's fault, of course. I'll go get it."

"I thought MIT was all computer sciences and math," Oliver said when Raquel was out of earshot.

Felicity picked up a ring to squint at it, wishing she'd paid more attention to that gemology course she'd listened to while working on the operating system she'd designed for the Foundry. "Oh, she was a Mathematics major," she said, "though, you know, MIT has a wide variety."

"And she's working in a jewelry shop?"

"Gotta do what you love. It works out, though, with her being willing to resize the rings today so we've got them for tomorrow."

"All in the name of fooling the woman trying to take over my company. I…"

When he trailed off, Felicity turned sharply. Her situational awareness wasn't the greatest, but she liked to think she was learning. Oliver wasn't poised for danger, though. Instead, he'd gone still, his gaze trained on a whimsical metal rack shaped like a little tree.

Felicity stepped closer. There were several little crystalline bird necklaces dangling from the tree's branches. The designer appeared to be local, as the "Canary Tweets" card at the base of the tree would suggest. "Oliver?"

He jerked and swiveled to face her, the automatic Oliver Queen smile in place. "What was that?"

"You okay?"

Before he could answer, Raquel came back with one of her custom ring boxes—Felicity had spent far too much time on her Etsy page, she realized, that she recognized the box alone—in hand. "I should have thought of this earlier," Raquel said. She set the box on the counter and opened it with a little flourish of one hand. "I don't want to toot my own horn, but I really think you're going to like this one."

"Oh my god," Felicity said, her eyes going wide.

* * *

"You're just going to keep playing with that all night, aren't you?" Oliver asked as he handed over a mint chocolate chip ice cream cone.

"I can't help it. It's such a pretty ring." But she made a point to take the ice cream with her left hand so she would stop worrying the ring with her thumb. She'd always been a fidgety person, but rings had never been something she'd played with before. Of course, rings had never really had a _meaning_ before, even if technically, this one didn't either. It was just part of what she was beginning to consider the undercover experience of publicly being married to Oliver.

Raquel had refitted a filigreed antique band with a cushion cut topaz that she declared "just within the tasteful range." Though Felicity would have objected to the karat count on both the ring and the gem, Oliver had simply pulled out his black Amex right around the time she'd started to drool. They'd taken a little longer to find a suitable wedding band for him (thankfully, the ring Raquel had picked out for her came in a set: wedding band _and_ engagement ring). She'd measured their ring fingers and had told them to come back in a couple of hours, and the rings would be ready.

Felicity still wasn't sure which one of them had found actually slipping on the rings for the first time more traumatic. She had her suspicions that it wasn't her, though Oliver stayed quiet about it the entire time, of course.

She wished he'd say _something_ about it, or the fact that he'd been staring at the bird necklaces, or anything, really, if only to keep her from trying to fill the silence with chatter so much. Either way, they were due at the Foundry soon. Neither really wanted to go back to their shared apartment until they absolutely had to, so Oliver had suggested ice cream.

"I know it's not traditional," she said, licking up the dribbling trail of mint-chip around the edge of the cone. "But I don't know, I like it a lot. And Raquel liked the commission money a lot. Plus, if the marriage were real, having a ring with fewer karats means you have something to build upon for future events like promotions and things like that, work wife."

"I'm so glad you're looking out for me in my fake future, work husband," Oliver said as he twisted his vanilla and chocolate swirl cone around to lick the other side.

They left Bobbie's Ice Cream Parlor together and started walking back to Oliver's car, which was still parked in front of Venit Jewelers a couple of blocks away. After a long and miserably cold winter, the freezing temperatures had slowly released their grip on Starling City, letting the days tentatively warm up once more. Felicity was grateful mostly for Oliver and Sara's sake—especially Sara's, as the corset kind of left a lot of her torso bare—but she couldn't deny that she'd missed walking down to the ice cream parlor a few blocks from Queen Consolidated on her lunch break.

"Hey, speaking of your, um, future, fake or otherwise." Felicity took a deep breath. "I know it's not really my place to ask, but are you and Sara okay? I was a little surprised she wasn't there this morning."

"I don't think she'll be staying over for breakfast much," Oliver said in a tight voice.

Felicity immediately felt her heart plummet. "Oh, no. I didn't come between you, did I? Because I can go to the press, let them know it was all a mistake."

"_After_ I put several thousand dollars on my card?" Oliver asked.

"I can pay you back."

"Felicity, it's okay." Oliver studied his ice cream for a moment. "There were things we needed to work through. Separately, it appears. Maybe I should consider this whole thing a blessing."

Felicity wrinkled her nose. "Does that mean what I think it means?"

"We're…taking a break."

"Oliver, I'm sorry."

"It's not you," Oliver said. "Don't worry about—"

This time he didn't trail off so much as stop in the middle of his sentence and in the middle of the sidewalk. "Oliver?" Felicity asked, tensing.

He crouched to tie his shoe. "Don't look behind you."

Of course she immediately did. "Oh, crap," she said, whipping back around.

One corner of his lips moved upward slightly. "Subtle. See anything?"

"No, nothing. Is something there? Did somebody follow us?" She hoped it wasn't the paparazzi. Sure, they had rings, but it was a giant hassle to try and walk around with people shouting their names and begging for a quote. "It's not the _Daily Star_, is it? Gosh, I hate that rag."

"It's not reporters." Oliver looked grim as he rose to his feet and tossed his ice cream cone in the trash. "But we're definitely being followed."


End file.
